Our lab’s research focuses on experimentally testing the impacts of predator-induced fear on population-, community-, and ecosystem dynamics (the "ecology of fear" [PDF]), together with the effects of fear on health, development, gene expression, and neural archiecture in the brain. We conduct large-scale field experiments that provide a unique opportunity to test the demographic and trophic consequences of behavioural, physiological, and neurobiological phenomena. Our approach is to first establish the ecological validity of phenomena in the field and then explore the mechanisms in semi-natural conditions and in the lab.
Fear of the “big bad wolf” dominates the discourse on human-wildlife conflict. Humans fear wolves, and fear wolves “losing their fear” of humans – because if they fear us, they avoid us, and that protects us. Legal protection of wolves has been alleged to permit the emergence of “fearless” wolves. We conducted an unprecedented experiment demonstrating that wolves fully retain their fear of humans, even where they are legally protected. Our results help re-focus the discourse on human-wolf conflict, from ostensibly fearless wolves, to human food subsidies better explaining why fearful wolves ever risk encounters with the human “super predator”.
